1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the manufacture of elongate wooden handles for floor mops, brushes, rakes and the like and more particularly to handles made of laminated pieces of bamboo.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A number of implements such as floor mops, brushes, rakes and the like commonly have wooden handles in the form of elongate poles. In some cases the handles are solid, one-piece poles of a selected hard wood, e.g., maple. In other cases they are poles comprised of multiple pieces of bamboo laminated together. Such laminated structures are made by converting green bamboo cane into long dried strips which have a generally trapezoidal shape in cross-section (the green bamboo cane may be dried before or after it is cut into strips), and then assembling a number of such strips (usually four strips) around a number of wooden plugs of square cross-sectional shape (usually three plugs) to form a hollow tube. The plugs are usually made of a hard wood, e.g., maple or oak. One of the wooden plugs is located at each end of the tube and the third is located approximately equidistant from the other two plugs. The strips are coated with an adhesive and the assembled strips and plugs are laminated together under heat and pressure to form a stiff laminated pole. After lamination the resulting elongate pole is turned, e.g., on a lathe, to a suitable diameter and one end is processed to provide it with a taper or a screw thread whereby that end may be mated with a brush, mop or rake head. Such laminated handles have competed successfully with one piece sold wood handles. However, the foregoing lamination method suffers from the fact that a substantial amount of bamboo is discarded as waste in forming the elongate trapezoidally shaped strips and considerable labor is involved in converting the bamboo cane into laminated poles.